The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule created national standards to protect individuals' medical records and other personal health information. It protects all individually identifiable health information that is held or transmitted by a covered entity or its business associate, in any form or media, whether electronic, paper or oral.
It is considered important to minimize even the incidental disclosure of patient information to the extent possible. Health care providers have adopted a number of changes in their standard operating procedures to limit the incidental disclosure of patient health information beyond what is required to provide medical services to the patient in an effective and efficient manner. For example, most health care facilities take steps to make sure patient information is not retrievable by unauthorized individuals from discarded documents, records, and other materials containing identifiable patient information. Many organizations now require that such materials be shredded or incinerated to avoid the risk of disclosure. These materials may include empty plastic pill vials, discarded patient ID bracelets, and used plastic bags having patient labels. This requires that bins for collecting these materials be located through the facility, and that employees spend time to empty the bins and shred or burn the contents. As an alternative, some organizations mark through the name of the patient with a marking pen at the time that the material is discarded. This is also time consuming and may not be completely effective in rendering the name of the patient illegible.
It is seen, therefore, that there is a need for a data carrier for providing health information related to a patient in which the health information and the identity of the patient can be simply and efficiently disassociated.